A friend of mine, Blaise, once told me not to
introduce myself as “... what you would call a radical...”. He had
listened to me talking to a person who were questioning what a Free
Software activist does. My friend's rationale, to which I totally
agree, is that you must let the other person decide whether she thinks
you are a “radical” or not. In other words, if you say you are a
“radical” from the beginning, it will probably induce the other person
to a pre-judgement about you, which is not good for you and for her.

As I said, I agree with him. But I am going through a lot of
situations in my life that are constantly reminding me that, maybe, I
am that “radical” after all. I do not know whether this is good or
bad, and I can say I have been questioning myself for a while now.
This post, by the way, is going to be a lot about self-questioning.

The question, strange as it may sound, is not only valid but also
becoming more and more important these days. If you think that the
four freedoms are
enough to guarantee that the Free Software will respect the user, you
are probably being oversimplistic. The four freedoms are
essential, but they are not sufficient. You need more. I need more.
And this is why I think the Free Software movement should have been
called the Respectful Software movement.

Yes, you are reading correctly: I decided to buy a freacking
Chromebook. I really needed a lightweight notebook with me for my
daily hackings while waiting for my subway station, and this one
seemed to be the best option available when comparing models and
prices. To be fair, and before you throw me rocks, I visited the
LibreBoot X60's website
for some time, because I was strongly considering buying one (even
considering its weight); however, they did not have it in stock, and I
did not want to wait anymore, so...

Anyway, as one might expect, configuring GNU/Linux on notebooks is
becoming harder as time goes by, either because the infamous Secure
Boot (anti-)feature, or
because they come with more and more devices that demand proprietary
crap to be loaded. But fortunately, it is still possible to overcome
most of those problems and still get a GNU/Linux distro running.

It has been a while since I dream of being able to send encrypted
e-mail to everyone in my contact list. It is still a distant future,
but fortunately it is getting closer with campaigns like the Reset
the Net. And while I already send
encrypted messages to a couple of friends, it is always good to
discover (and share!) some configuration tips to make your life easy
:-).

This post is massively inspired by a post in the gnu-prog-discuss
mailing list. This is a closed list of the GNU Project, and only GNU maintainers and contributors can
join, so I cannot put a link to the original message (by Mike Gerwitz), but this topic is being discussed over
and over again at many places, so you will not have trouble finding
similar opinions. I am also “responding” to a recent discussion that
I had with Luiz Izidoro,
which is a “friend” (as he himself likes to say) of the LibrePlanet
São Paulo group.

It has been a while since I wanted to write about this subject. At
many presentations that I gave during these last 2 years, I used the
expression in the title in order to try to raise more awareness about
why we should take care of our privacy (and maybe everyone's). But
what does it really mean?

I am also on

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